Principles of Archival Inventory Construction

This paper presents a systematic method of progressively arranging and describing archival and manuscript accessions using inventory-style description. Description is based on arrangement. The inventory links these two aspects of intellectual control by being structured to reflect, for each accession, both the physical arrangement of record series and the natural descriptors that govern the order of the file units within them.

The inventory serves as the controlled source for all index/catalog terms. Index entries are derived from the inventory and are cumulated to link all inventories, as was recommended by the Society of American Archivists Finding Aids Committee in 1978. Additional terms brought out by more refined processing of an accession are incorporated in the internal structure of the original inventory. Rules for proper form of name entry are employed as an authority control. Topical subject access is by structured language and is keyed to primary subject matter. Natural language terms can be derived as index terms from original file unit descriptors and, if used, would provide topical access to the file unit level.